AllenLowe

I enjoyed Notes and Tones but was alarmed by the number of unchallenged anti-semitic comments -

problem is, how many saxophonists are named Noah?

Some more excellent research from this bio: "Few people know this, but Wayne Shorter's birth name was Edward Kennedy Ellington Duke Parker Charlie Evans Bill Lateef Yusef Lee Harvey Oswald. When he applied for membership in the Philadelphia musicians union they advised him that his name might create confusion with royalty checks. So he changed it to Irving Mills." I didn't know this -

Well, it's not all bad: now check out this passage from the book: "Many people have asked Shorter how the group got the name Weather Report. Shorter has pointed out that when he lived in Philadelphia in the 1950s he used to watch the Weather Channel 10-12 hours a day. This inspired him, when forming the group some years later, to use that initial exposure. At first he was unsure of what he should call it - Weather Retort? Weather Remark? Leather Resort? He went to a Gypsy woman and asked her what to do. She looked into her crystal ball and said: I see miles of footprints. I see parpahanelia. I see Japanese American woman weeping in the aisles. I see a better Morgan (suddenly lapsing into German); that is the end of my report. Whether you pay me or not I don't give a shi*." wow, this is good stuff...

Also, Mike, remember - the kid may have been a premie -

"The entire band left the country in tears." Now, does this mean they were crying when they left Japan? Or that they said something to upset the Japanese people, leaving throngs of weeping Asians in their wake - and was it some mean spirited reference to Pearl Harbour? I mean, this is quite hypocritical, especially since Shorter later played with an Austrian -

I checked Switchboard, and there are 20 John Bothwell's listed in the US - anybody feel like hitting the phones?

wait - how about saxophonists named Sonny: Rollins, Stitt, Criss, Simmons, Fox, Von Bulow -

Just to add to my previous - Roswell plays changes very well - Julius not as well, but he was still a transcendant player -

just to add to this, though I probably disagree with Williams in the big picture, he was on to something about "pure" folk sources - Bill Malone has pointed out, in a discussion of early country music, that the sources for a great deal of early country recordings were minstrel and pop music -

yow, what a disaster this book sounds like - and Mike is absolutely right - the old saying "when an elephant flys you don't worry about how long he stays up" does NOT apply here, just because we're grateful that there's a book on Wayne Shorter in circulation. This does continue the sad Santoro/Gourse line of jazz bio - glad someone mentioned Sanotoro's Mingus book, as that is THE WORST book ever written by a jazz critic with a good reputation -

Well, Chuck, great minds think alike - but all seriousness aside...(as Steve Allen used to say) - this rules thing is frought with danger - Dave Schildkraut told me something that I found to be one of the most illuminating quotes I've ever heard re-jazz, though it may be mostly for personal reasons. He told me that Joe Henderson said to him: "I never felt I could really play jazz when there was only bebop - but after Coltrane I knew that there was a place for me." Now here's a guy (Henderson) who had no lack of the musical fundamentals, no shortage of knowledge of the rules - and yet even he felt constrained by the conventions of the dominant post-war music, bebop, to the point of feeling that he could not even really play jazz until he heard another musician (Coltrane) who felt no such constraints. Personally, as a saxophonist, this has always been an issue for me - I know how to play changes but I don't feel I am at my best in the standard format. And yet, if I concentrate on music that is more open I sometimes feel like I am cheating, perhaps because of my original exposure to the music of chords and song. Internally I know this is nonsense, but it's very hard to discard this kind of conditioning - especially since I have known a fair amount of "free" players who, musically speaking, did not know their ass from their elbow (including one fairly famous free drummer who could not keep a steady 4-beat, try as he might). On the other hand, I have performed in public with both Julius Hemphill and Roswell Rudd, and felt as though the stage was about to levitate -

"Im not sure about Buddy Bolden" - well, ask Wynton Marsalis - from what I could tell on the documentary, the two were quite close -

Sorry to be so slow to respond - 1) I think American Pop is a good intro to my work, but that actually Devilin Tune is better from a jazz perspective - both can be ordered from Cadence - 2) Wondrich is smart but a bit jivey - makes a fair amount of mistakes, writes in a way that personally I find, from a stylistic standpoint, a bit tired - I have not, however, completely read his book but only browsed through it - it does appear, I will say, immodestly, to lift some things from my own work -

Re-Endgame and Schildkraut - 1) thanks for the clarification. I actually think the sound is very decent on the Shildkraut - I recorded it on an old cassette machine and than re-mastered digitally; of course there were many limitations with the original - it certainly sounds as good as a lot of old boots, and actually probably better - only had a single microphone, placed on a speaker through which the alto was playing - also recorded 1979 - more important is that Dave was a genius; I personally regard him as one of the two or three greatest modern alto players ever - in separate conversations that I had with them, Dizzy Gillespie, Jackie Mclean, Bill Evans, and Stan Getz agreed. 2) Engame is a label that was born and died within the space of about 6 months. A long story with some legal isues, I did the mastering for the Japanese market, spent a fair amount of money, and than had my Japanese contact back out - lost a lot of money but made it back in about 3 years, fortunately. The other releases were Art Pepper (which had to be officially withdrawn because my source lied about the rights), Warne Marsh (VERY bad sound quality but still interesting) and Zoot Sims (also, I find out, questionable) - at this point I am just unloading them at cut-out prices through ebay -

wanted to add - Porter Kilbert -

I like Bothwell, and have a nice LP with notes, I think, by Dan Morgenstern -

well - I produced and released that Schildkraut CD - I recorded it live in New Haven 1979 - I think he plays quite brilliantly - I'm willing, in the interests of argument, to send it to anyone here for cost and let them judge for themselves - assuming this does not violate any commercial rules here - let me know if you are interested -

Matisse - I think I remember that guy - was doing time for bank robbery - he and Gary were lovers -

"Though in some ways I find it even more enigmatic how pre-modernist music has become less strange with the passage of time, rather than more so. " I'm not sure about this - I listen to a lot of 1920s hillbiully music, and I find that people consider it weird beyond weird - in a way it's so old it's new -

actually, Gary and I shared a prison cell together at Attica in 'the '60s. During the uprising he insisted on using me as a shield - which is why I never fail to set off the metal detector at the airport -

hey - just wondering and don't want to start a political firestorm - is it true Ellis was a Republican? If so, I find this somewhat amusing, given his acceptance of 1960s hip trappings - (by the way I think he was a great trumpeter, so don't yell at me) -

Rottweiler or dachshund? (I didn't want to say anything, but that might explain the odd baby pictures I found in your wallet) -

Gary is an old friend of mine - we used to take baths together, as his mother and my mother were cousins - actually, his mother was married to her cousin, but that's another story. When we were 6 years old he poked a sharp stick into my eye, blinding me but making it much easier for me to beg pennies on the streeets of Atlanta - though having grown up in NYC I'm not really sure how I got there(Gary did walk me to the subway one morning, and I did wonder why they kept saying: "train to Atlanta") -

I'm with Nate on this - one problem, of course, is that to say "avant garde" is to refer to so many different players and styles that it's difficult to generalize in an accurate way - but Nate's analysis is perfect. I would add that avant gardists, like modernists in any form (literature, theater, film) are trying to replace outmoded gestures and worn out forms, to substitute the new for the easily identifiable and thus predictable cadences of an older way of creating. Audiences tend to prefer that with which they are already familiar. But forms like music will die if they are not constantly renewed - the other thing to realize is that even much more conservative jazz musicians are positively efected by the avant garde, borrowing its techniques and certain means of its expression for their own much more conventional purposes.